The Misfortune Cookie

The Corrupt Ones is an overequipped assembly-line job that should have been recalled for faulty design. Everything about it is excessive, from the profusion of villains to the constantly plunging necklines of the heroine, whose contours help turn the movie into another (Elke) Sommer festival.

Robert Stack, a freelance photographer on the loose in Red China, stumbles onto the secret of a long-buried treasure. Once back in Macao, he develops a case of justifiable paranoia when he is set upon by a chic Chinese princess (Nancy Kwan) who keeps sticking out her tong at him. Following this he is mugged and bugged by a vicious racketeer (Christian Marquand) and an avaricious police inspector.

Giving his customary plywood performance, Stack proves impervious to beatings, as well as to the entreaties of a bevy of stacked courtesans who try to vamp him out of the secret. His taste, it turns out, is strictly Occidental, and when he shares the discovery with Elke she flashes her smile and her decolletage and helps him uncover the loot. To no avail: the riches finally go into the Red when Mao's minions gun down the princess and the racketeer and force the inspector back to the West.

Director James Hill does what he can to keep this misfortune cookie from crumbling, but the film's main failing is the drawback to most Oriental fare. Two hours afterward, the viewer is likely to be hungry for another movie.

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